Ermine moths as vandals

Ermine moths (see prev.) are in the news:

The moth, or rather its caterpillars, created a stir this May when they were reported to have stripped bare 15 fully grown trees in Shipley Hall Fields, a small but popular municipal park in the Frizinghall area.

It was not the thousands of inch-long caterpillars that caused consternation but their behaviour, as they wove giant webs over the whole trees, including the trunks, and even the railings of the park. People were so nervous that the park was deserted, and councillors demanded the moth larvae be zapped.

A council worker who went to look said 20 mature trees had completely disappeared under white silk: "It was warm, but it was as if a big frost had hit the park, about minus 40C with hoar frost. The vegetation had disappeared as in a film."

Source: Guardian

The badger's foot

John Cleveland:

Come keen iambics with your badger’s feet
And badger-like bite till your teeth do meet.

(But "badger" -- like most other mustelids' names -- is of course trochaic.)

Tomb of the Otters

National Geographic on the latest heap of stones found in Orkney:

Thousands of human bones have been found inside a Stone Age tomb on a northern Scottish island, archaeologists say.

The 5,000-year-old burial site, on South Ronaldsay (map) in the Orkney Islands, was accidentally uncovered after a homeowner had leveled a mound in his yard to improve his ocean view. (See Scotland pictures.)

Authorities were alerted to the find in 2010 after a subsequent resident, Hamish Mowatt, guessed at the site's significance.

Mowatt had lowered a camera between the tomb's ceiling of stone slabs and was confronted by a prehistoric skull atop a muddy tangle of bones.

...

The site has also been dubbed the Tomb of the Otters, because initial excavations revealed prehistoric otter bones and dung amid the human bones.

The animal remains indicate that people visited the burial site only sporadically.

"It suggests the tomb was not entirely sealed and that otters were trampling in and out a lot" throughout the tomb's use, Gibson said.

"For that to occur, you must think there was a gap of a year or two" between grave visits or burials.

via Ben Loory on twitter.

Dog meets badger

Konrad Lorenz, Man Meets Dog:

Many years ago I had a great surprise when I brought home a tame young badger and introduced it to the savage Alsatians which I kept at that time. I fully expected that this strange, wild creature would release all the worst hunting instincts in my dogs, but exactly the opposite was the case: the badger, which had formerly lived in the house of a forester and had obviously been accustomed to dogs, approached them fearlessly, and the dogs, though they certainly sniffed it with an unwonted caution and reserve, made it clear from the first that they did not regard it as game but as a somewhat unusual member of their own kind. A few hours later they were playing with it in unrestrained intimacy [...] From the first the dogs put all their trust in the social inhibitions of the badger and allowed him to roll them on their backs, seize them by the throat, and, according to all the rules of the game, to "throttle" them, just as they would have allowed a friendly dog to do.

via Stan Carey.